Observations on 2018

Columns - Parting Shots

As we put this year’s State of the Industry issue together and took a long, hard look at the data, we debated about how to summarize what we found as a big headline for our cover illustration.

Was it fair to say that, “The Golf Business is Back?” I rejected this one because I hate the notion that our business is getting “back” to a fake boom time when a lot of awful decisions got made. It also reminds me of the current golf media obsession with Tiger being “back.” Puh-leeze! Can’t we just run our business like a business without relying on the return of Eldrick “The Messiah” Woods to succeed?

Was it more accurate to say that, “We’re Getting Healthier?” Well, that’s true too but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s unquestionable that industry suppliers have been pleasantly surprised with sales in a “slumping” golf market the past few years and the number of courses closing has held steady at about 175 a year, but that’s not “health” in the traditional sense of growth and expansion.

Should we stick with, “The Building Boom Continues?” Duh. We’d just be telling you what you already know, although I think the information we developed – along with the study done by our friends at the ASGCA – provides a new level of insight into what kind of remodeling is being done and why.

So, those possible summary statements are true, but we went with “The Great Reinvestment” as the truest appraisal of the state of golf in 2018 for a bunch of reasons.

First, it’s undeniable that we’re in the midst of the biggest remodeling boom in golf history. It’s finally occurred to everyone that courses must change and improve to compete.

Second, the amount of money being spent in a “flat” market is astounding when you total it all up. A couple of billion dollars a year is being poured into improving bunkers, recontouring greens, fixing nagging drainage problems or the soup-to-nuts redesigns and restorations we’re seeing at the highest end of the business. Finally, since it’s not about getting “back” to the old days, it must be about reinventing golf for the future. That’s what we’re seeing now.

I won’t lie … the Great Reinvestment will not be a rising tide that lifts all boats and magically solve golf’s broader systemic problems (time, perceptions, women, kids, etc.). Instead, it’s going to further separate the Haves and the Have Nots in our industry. The U.S. simply can’t support 15,000 golf courses. The fact that smart operators are investing and giving picky golfers a better product will doom a lot of stale, badly run facilities that have been limping along for years.

The divide is going to widen into a chasm and many small, underfunded operations won’t be able to cope with the competition and the inevitable, grinding rise of labor costs. In the future, there will be two kinds of golf courses: those that manage labor costs effectively and those that become condo complexes.

That said, I’m heartened by the willingness of thousands of courses around the country to reinvest now to ensure better futures decades from now. That’s both farsighted and a sign that banks have regained some confidence in our happy little industry. Sure, many clubs are self-financing their renovations, but others have borrowed. That could not have happened five years ago.

I guess I’ll pat myself on the back for years of saying that a “smaller, smarter golf market is emerging.” What I didn’t see coming was how aggressively operators are investing in that scenario. They see, at the local level, opportunities not just to survive, but to thrive. In fact, a bunch of them are just kicking ass right now. A surprising number of clubs are posting astonishing profits (“excess revenues”) these days and there’s no reason to think that will change absent some catastrophic event that will make us all forget about golf’s petty problems.

So, here we are nearly a decade after our generation’s Great Recession, and instead of talking about the death of golf, we find that we’re in the midst of the Great Reinvestment. Golf is finally getting smart and supply and demand will even out over the next decade. We’re incredibly fortunate in many ways that we didn’t kill our own industry with stupidity and overbuilding (though we tried). Now it’s up to us to steward the business of golf the same way you steward your property … intelligently and always with an eye on the long term.

Here’s wishing you an awesome 2018 … and a bright future for all of us.

Pat Jones is editorial director and publisher of Golf Course Industry. He can be reached at pjones@gie.net or 216-393-0253.

Snow, ice and clay

Features - Spotlight

Providing recreational opportunities at a facility with a short golf season requires superintendent Jesse Shaver and the Gull Lake Country Club team to use a different set of construction and maintenance skills.

Gull Lake Country Club installs a 50’ by 70’ ice rink in its parking lot each December. Superintendent Jesse Shaver says the rink requires six hours of maintenance during a typical winter week. Gull Lake’s version of a Zamboni is a handheld unit using a hose.

Snow or Poa, Shaver’s team, which includes five year-round employees and swells to 15 in the summer, finds ways to help Gull Lake expand its amenities, bringing multiple generations to the club’s 110-acre grounds. “To me, that’s the fun part of the job,” Shaver says. “I’m not just taking care of the golf course every day. I get to do a bunch of different things and learn a lot more about different areas of life and what it takes to make a club viable and successful.”

Shaver knew Gull Lake planned to expand its offerings when he applied for the head superintendent position, and turf concerns partially sparked his first non-golf recreational project. Gull Lake lacked formal cross-country ski trails, so members unknowingly crossed greens and fairways during winter workouts. Shaver studied how other Michigan clubs handled skiing and presented members with a plan in 2011 to route maintained trails away from key golf course features.

“I talked to a bunch of different people, researched what we needed, gave them a price and they said, ‘Do it,’” Shaver says. “Then we had to do it.” The result is two trails, one hillier than the other, consisting of 2 ½ miles of skiable surface. Shaver laughs when describing how a tractor pulled the groomer during the first winter of trail maintenance. “That was a pain because we got stuck all the time,” he says. The club purchased a snowmobile the following winter, and Shaver says during an average week – snowfall totals quickly fluctuate – his team spends “four to five” hours maintaining the trails. Snow is packed in layers at the beginning of each winter, creating the necessary base to handle the wear produced by skiers.

Trial, error, ingenuity and a sense of humor allowed Shaver’s team to handle its next winter project: the construction of a 50’ by 70’ ice rink. Members had previously skated on Gull Lake, but erratic winter temperatures raised safety concerns. The club decided to build a rink in a section of the parking lot bordering the platform tennis courts with easy bathroom and hot drink access. Constructing the rink is akin to using an erector set, with frames and boards labeled and arranged in an orderly fashion, although creating a flat surface represented a dilemma because the parking lot falls 18 inches where the rink sits. Freezing additional water on the lower side is a tricky task and offered no guarantee of yielding a consistent surface. The solution, coincidentally, originates from a golf course maintenance staple. Dispersing 90 tons of compacted topdressing sand on the lower end of the parking lot produces an even skating surface. The sand purchased for the rink is used on the golf course the following spring.

The rink is collapsible and a member who owns a trucking company donated a trailer for storage. Course accessories are stored in the trailer during the winter. The rink opens in mid-December. The average winter week, Shaver says, includes six hours of rink maintenance, and Gull Lake’s version of a Zamboni is a handheld unit using a hose. An operator walks around the ice to smooth the surface.

Playing bocce ball on a Har-Tru clay surface is a popular non-golf activity at Gull Lake Country Club.

The crew first constructed the rink in 2012, a year before bocce ball arrived at Gull Lake. A patio renovation emphasizing gathering areas made bocce ball a fit for the club, again turning Shaver into a recreational detective. Shaver studied the one court he could find in the area and he worked closely with the landscape contractor who installed the patio. Golf course renovations force a superintendent to spend hours researching grass varieties before recommending a surface to a committee or ownership. Bocce ball court construction propels a manager into the Har-Tru clay vs. oyster shell debate. Shaver selected Har-Tru clay which needs groomed, rolled and even watered to limit dust during dry stretches. Maintaining the court requires around four hours per week, with Boike and Veeder using their baseball experience to produce a splendid surface.

“They are really hungry to perfect it and make it better, and they understand how the weather is going to affect it,” says Shaver, who frequently demonstrates progress to members and exchanges ideas with industry peers via Twitter. “It’s been a learning curve for all of us. How do you take care of a bocce ball court? We didn’t even know what one looked like, so taking care of it was a trial and error, talking to people and finding how they take care of their tennis courts, how some of their tips and tricks can help us with our bocce ball court. It’s the same thing with ski trails and ice rink. I kind of figured it out, trained one of my assistants and he trained another guy. It just trickled down the line.”

The bocce ball court and ice rink are lit, expanding nighttime revenue opportunities. Add placing Christmas decorations around the club, constructing a Halloween house, and maintaining beach and yacht areas, and Shaver’s team has provided entertainment for every grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, daughter, son and guest Gull Lake services.

“It’s an evolution of the superintendent’s job,” Shaver says. “And it’s the evolution that country clubs specifically need to make or have been making over the years. The days of dad spending five days a week at the club are over. Those days were a great time, but you have to really appeal to the families and younger generations and have something for the kids to do and have something for the mothers to do or a lot of these families aren’t going to be members anymore, or won’t be members to begin with.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s senior editor.

Relationship Advice

Columns - Design Concepts

Great golf courses are designed to foster good golf. Golf course architects are stereotypically viewed as masochists. In reality, we try to provide a collection of doable shots for all levels of golfers … well, most of the time. Whether felt “in the gut” way back when, or known because of recent scientific study, we understand the relationship between golfers and the course.

Golf course architects are fond of saying “there are no rules,” but some general golf course architectural principles have developed over decades. These are often based on golf certain physics truisms, the notion of “proportionality” and knowledge that golfers prefer to shoot a decent score, meaning we recognize:

The relationship of shot difficulty to shot length (longer is harder)

That punishment should fit the crime

That shot difficulty should relate to success on the previous shot.

Allow me to explain.

The relationship of shot difficulty to shot length

In general, longer shots are harder than shorter shots, because:

A 200-yard shot 5 degrees off line flies twice as far off line than a shot 5 degrees off line from 100 yards.

Longer shots also receive deeper greens, because average golfers get less back spin on lower trajectory shots.

Similarly, greens (and fairways) should be wider on uphill shots, or shots into the wind, as head winds deflect shots off line to a greater degree. Further, many believe greens on long iron approach shots should, compared to shorter approach shots, be/have:

Flatter front to back to allow shots to roll to back pin positions

More gently contoured

Lower to the ground, to allow for lower loft, roll-up shots.

Punishment should correlate to the degree of miss

We hear this from tour pros and low handicappers, who expect systematic reward and punishment, leading to things like:

Intermediate rough cut.

Flat green side sand bunkers with steep (and tightly mown) banks. Eliminating sloped sand near the green reduces plugged lies for shots missing the green by 10 feet, while a 20- foot miss finds flat sand and a good lie.

This isn’t a new thought. Donald Ross built fairway sand bunkers that were deeper on the outside edge to punish wider misses more harshly than shots that narrowly missed the fairway and found the inside edge of the bunker. However, Ross was also careful to sharply slope the last few feet of sand all around the bunker, believing it was unfair for any shot to have randomly have an unplayable lie up against the bunker lip. Historically, architects build deeper green side bunkers than fairway bunkers, reasoning golfers will use high lofted sand wedges.

Shot difficulty should relate to success on the previous shot

This is a tenant of classic strategy in that a golfer who plays a higher risk shot off the tee is usually given the advantage of an easier second shot. It is often applied more generally in design for balance.

For example, one architect would rank the tee shot, approach and first putt as easy (1), medium (2) or hard (3). He believed that most par 4 holes should have rankings around 5-7, for mid-difficulty, but with a mix of where the difficulty lies. Holes would be too hard if the shots ranked 3-3-3=9 or too easy if ranked 1-1-1=3. He would only design a select few holes at 4 or 8, either when the land demanded it or specifically to create harder or easier holes for variety.

Some architects believe difficulty should generally increase as the round progresses, starting with an easy opening hole, and finishing with more difficult holes to help determine the better player in a match. Others strive for some rhythm and balance of holes, avoiding any stretch of extremely hard or easy holes for variety.

None of these general rules trumps the architect’s cardinal rule of relating the golf hole to the land itself. It is rarely satisfactory to put “five pounds of green on a four-pound green site.” Having a somewhat random mix of greens, and perhaps a touch of whimsy, is just as important as any hard and fast rule or theoretical design axiom.

An ounce of prevention

Features - Irrigation

As the heart of an irrigation system, a pump station is vulnerable to all sorts of wear and tear. Our experts walk you through a preseason inspection.

If you’ve had an irrigation pump station crap out on you, then you know how quickly costly repair bills add up. Avoid these unwanted, budget-busting charges, by better utilizing downtime – especially during the slower off-season months – to make sure your irrigation system’s heart is in top working condition.

Start with a proactive approach. Visit your pumping station come green-up time and use the hours available to you during the slower winter months to make sure your irrigation system’s main driver is ready to go for the upcoming season.

“It is important to do a proper and thorough check of your pumping station to prevent unexpected failures,” says Willie Slingerland, a Watertronics regional sales manager. “Identify possible problems before the pump station is needed for the season.”

Following a winter or offseason hibernation, Bill Stinson, golf pump sales manager/Eastern U.S for Rain Bird, recommends enlisting an experienced golf pump service company/technician to perform preventative maintenance services during non-irrigation months. When possible, use the same technician who winterized the system the previous fall, he says.

This is not as daunting a task as it may seem, taking perhaps three to five hours total to complete. “It is not a lot of time, but it may not be able to be done in-house, says Brian Vinchesi, design engineer for Irrigation Consulting Inc. “But it is worth doing as it will operate the pump system better, prevent catastrophic failure and the pump system will last longer.”

Preventative maintenance goes a long way. “I am a big fan of cleaning out pump houses and cleaning pump systems,” Vinchesi says. “Some pump houses are dirty and cluttered and you can’t move around in them, while others are spotless,” he says. “The cleaner the better for equipment.”

A preseason inspection is recommended for golf courses looking to ensure a pump station is operating at peak efficiency when regular irrigation is needed.

Paint should be touched up on the piping and building. Holes should be sealed. Polishing paint repels dirt accumulation, and painting the walls and floors keeps dust down. “Make sure fans and vents, as well as doors, have operating hardware and repair as necessary,” Vinchesi says.

It also helps hiring a qualified service technician to go through each and every part of the pump station’s operating system, Slingerland says. “There are safety issues with regard to entering and servicing a panel that most likely has three-phase power,” he adds.

Another key area of the pump station to check is the control panel, says Brian Keighin, a principal of Irrigation Technologies. He recommends keeping the interior of the panel clean, making sure door gaskets are intact, pliable and providing a good seal, and checking how cabinet cooling system are operating. This keeps all electronic components at the correct operating temperature and prevents overheating and premature failure, he says.

“Check electrical connections to make sure they are tight,” Keighin adds. “Check and double check that the power is off and there is not transient charge before completing this step. Also, check to make sure all mechanical fasteners are still factory tight. Clean the filter elements, replace damaged/worn elements and check operation of the filter system after cleaning.”

Superintendents must check the station’s flow sensor calibration to determine if it is within the manufacturer’s specifications, Keighin says.

In addition, pump packing seals should be adjusted or replaced if there is excessive water coming from the pump shaft. Dynamic flow testing should be done on each pump. They should be within the design specifications for volume and head.

Each motor’s amp draw should be checked, as well. Too high a draw can identify a motor that is beginning to fail. “Insure that fertigation systems are plumbed properly and not dripping/leaking, and that pressure gauges are working and reading correct values,” Keighin says. “And the station’s heater or building heating system must be working properly to prevent possible freeze damage.”

The experts agree a wise move for superintendents is to have a factory authorized pump service technician complete an annual service on the station.

“Who knows the pump station better than a factory-trained professional who has access to service bulletins and technical information on the pump station,” Keighin says.

Pump station maintenance is a confusing issue. And since most people are not adept at a pump station’s inner workings, maintenance often gets overlooked or mismanaged, says Ashley Wilkinson, a golf and sports turf professor at Horry-Georgetown Technical College.

A service call with a trained professional can help ground managers avoid the perils associated with checking the electrical components of a pump station.

Inspections of the wet well and intake line should be done bi-annually. “I have seen numerous issues regarding this basic task,” Wilkinson says. “Depending upon location, barnacles, algae, shells and other biotic issues may arise and clog the intake screen. I have seen intake lines literally fold in half as they were unable to draw water.” Many times, a diver will report the intake screen is no longer present due to debris shifting or metal disintegration. This inspection may indicate a jetted intake screen is needed. A jetted intake screen will use high pressure water to blast debris away from the screen to avoid clogs.

A diver should check if the intake line is still two to three feet off the lake bottom to reduce sediment being pulled into the intake line, Wilkinson says. “The diver should check for cracks in the intake line that will allow sediment or fish, and even turtles, to enter the wet well,” he adds. “If this occurs, the wet well may fill with silt/mud and create low pressure issues as the vertical turbines cannot pull the water through the heavy silt.”

Inspect the wet well for gaps and cracks, Wilkinson says. A corrugated wet well is prone to decompose over time, allowing metal particles to collect and, eventually, get sucked into the propellers of the vertical turbine ruining them. If the preferred concrete vault wet well has settled, the gasket keeping a water tight seal may be compromised allowing soil to leak in or, worse, water may leak out and compromise the stability of the pump station pad. Lastly, the diver should check for rust underneath the skid, inspect the condition of the turbine baskets and see if excess silt has filled the bottom of the wet well.

Checking or changing the turbine oil should be done annually. At the same time, greasing the bearings should be done if it is not a sealed unit. Some manufacturers or service associates say to change the oil every 1,000 hours. Checking the packing should also be done. Adjustments should be made to make sure the packing is tight, so the unit is being cooled properly. If excessive heat is being created due to warm packing, the pump will eventually need serious repair.

“My recommendation would be to have all this work done through a service call,” Wilkinson says. “However, with proper training during that call, there is no reason this annual service can’t be completed in-house in the future.”

Checking all electrical connections to make sure no wires have come loose should be an annual task. Small vibrations in the unit and excessive heat during operation or summer use can loosen connections, which may create a short. “I would never tell any grounds manager to open the cabinet,” Wilkinson says. “It’s just too dangerous. But pulling the outside wires to see if they are tight is a reasonable maintenance task.”

When restarting for a new season, the “most crucial” would be those places that are exposed to outside elements. “This means pipes and tubes that have been subjected to high and low temperatures,” say Cary Harris, director of marketing for Gicon Pump. “Make sure there is also no damage from other sources, such as trucks, tractors, etc. Places that are easy to overlook are those that aren’t easy to see. Inside electrical panel, critters build nests and cause damage to wires and components. Pipes that are submerged may also be damaged or rusty.”

Stinson says performance testing will entail operating the station at full capacity to ensure it is meeting specified pressure and flow, and to confirm the incoming power grid can handle full demand. If the system fails the test, run each pump individually at its designed flow and pressure, to uncover performance issues.

“Don’t skimp on the pump station service and repair, as it’s vital and therefore mission-critical,” he says. “Once the inspection is completed, all details should be thoroughly documented. This is important from a trend analysis and predictive maintenance standpoint.” Ignoring known problems and the signs of potential problems will likely result in greater expense, frustration, and often “embarrassment.” Respond immediately to signs/symptoms that surface from the inspection.

John Torsiello is a Torrington, Conn.-based writer and frequent GCI contributor.

adobe stock

Too Much of a Good Thing

Columns - Irrigation Issues

HDPE pipe is becoming more popular for use on golf course irrigation systems, with more than 50 percent of new systems utilizing HDPE mainlines and an even higher percentage using HDPE laterals. HDPE pipe works well, but only when properly designed, specified and installed. As with any product, it had some initial issues.

For starters, some systems were specified with too low a pressure rating in the pipe. Then, there were failures of new HDPE systems in Florida – dubbed “polygate.” We learned you need pipe with a pressure rating higher than the operating pressure and then some — no different than PVC.

Contractors, distributors and designers learned the hard way you cannot weld a high-pressure rated fitting to a low-pressure rated pipe and the wall thicknesses needed to match up, which, in most cases, required machining the fittings. The industry also learned that HDPE pipe does not like chlorine or high temperatures in the soil. And, lastly, side fusion for HDPE laterals came and went. Time provided an education and most of these issues are no longer a problem. When it comes to HDPE, it’s all good ... or maybe it’s not.

As the above issues have faded and HDPE pipe systems seem “bulletproof,” some contractors are pushing the envelope and not necessarily in a good way. They’re pushing the limits of the pipe and/or taking advantage of what it will let you do even if it’s not in the course’s or irrigation system’s best interest.

Because HDPE pipe is fused, you can join together very long lengths. There really is no limit, especially when you are doing 2-inch laterals. HDPE pipe is also easily installed by pulling as opposed to trenching using (hopefully) the proper equipment. If you have the right soil and enough horsepower, you can pull very long lengths. HDPE is very flexible, especially at smaller sizes so you can make turns easily — too easily. On the adjacent picture, the red line indicates the installed pipe routing. You can see the contractor put a sprinkler at the front right of the tee (as you play) and continued their pipe pull of the 2-inch pipe down the slope out into the rough, making a 180-degree turn with the pipe and then going back up the slope to the tee to install a sprinkler at the left front of the tee. No fittings, all pipe. Most likely the radius of the turn was based on how quickly the machine could turn. You could never get away with this with PVC. HDPE allowed it and the result is a bad practice, at best, and a poor quality installation as a fact. In this case, the superintendent even questioned how the contractor could do that and wondered if the pipe broke, how would he fix it. The answer? He wouldn’t. It would be unfixable with that much curvature in the pipe. If it was PVC, there would have been elbows used and all the pipe would be up on the edges of the tee, not in the rough like it was shown on the irrigation plan and how the HDPE should have been installed.

Just because the pipe will let you do such things, there is no reason to do it. Instead, it weakens the pipe and lowers the integrity of the entire irrigation system. All pipes have curvature limits, velocity limits and pressure ratings, and they should be adhered to. HDPE, as good as it is for certain applications, shouldn’t be taken advantage of because it is too good.

Brian Vinchesi, the 2015 Irrigation Association Industry Achievement Award winner, is President of Irrigation Consulting, Inc., a golf course irrigation design and consulting firm with offices in Pepperell, Massachusetts and Huntersville, North Carolina that designs golf course irrigation systems throughout the world. He can be reached at bvinchesi@irrigationconsulting.com or 978-433-8972 or followed on twitter @bvinchesi.